The regulating of video entertainment has long since been a point of conflict between parents and children. Excessive amounts of TV or video games have often been considered a sedentary and isolating activity. Currently, dedicated media consoles sold by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony collectively sell in excess of 20 million systems per year worldwide.
A report by the Entertainment and Software Association entitled, “2013 Sales, Demographic, and Usage Data—Essential facts about the computer and video game industry” shows that 79% of parents in the US place time limits on video game play. Manually tracking and enforcing a time-based strategy often burdens the parent and manifests as a point-of-contention in the parent-child relationship as requests to shut-off the device are met with resistance and pleas for additional time. Attempts to automate this process have been implemented by both game console manufactures, television manufacturers, and as standalone devices which disable the media system itself; however, these approaches are not always user friendly, have their own limitations such as multiplayer situations, and even damage the media system.
By integrating a regulating control circuitry into the human input device of a media system, such as the wireless controller of a console system, the child's access to the media system is enforced without prejudice, thus removing the parent from the point-of-conflict. In addition, by placing regulating device within a controller, individual participation may be metered appropriately when there are multiple players participating in game play.